| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: grey venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the
embankment. Here and there was a pleasant village among trees,
with a noisy shipping-yard; here and there a villa in a lawn. The
wind served us well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel; and
we were running pretty free when we began to sight the brickyards
of Boom, lying for a long way on the right bank of the river. The
left bank was still green and pastoral, with alleys of trees along
the embankment, and here and there a flight of steps to serve a
ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman with her elbows on her
knees, or an old gentleman with a staff and silver spectacles. But
Boom and its brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with every
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: [5] Simonides is still in the chrysalis or grub condition of private
citizenship; he has not broken the shell as yet of ordinary
manhood.
[6] Lit. "in that case, I think I should best be able to point out the
'differentia' of either."
Thus it was that Simonides spoke first: Well then, as to private
persons, for my part I observe,[7] or seem to have observed, that we
are liable to various pains and pleasures, in the shape of sights,
sounds, odours, meats, and drinks, which are conveyed through certain
avenues of sense--to wit, the eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth. And there
are other pleasures, those named of Aphrodite, of which the channels
|
